Why Eton, Britain’s 574-year-old high school, is embracing ed-tech

What does a nearly six-century-old private school that charges $54,000 a year in tuition do when confronted with start-ups with bright ideas about how education should work? If you’re Eton College, alma mater to much of the British establishment including the serving prime minister and the mayor of London, you work with them, The Atlantic reports. Along with Oxford University’s Said Business School, Eton College—a high school for boys between the ages of 13 and 18—has partnered with Emerge Venture Lab, a London-based accelerator, to support educational technology, or “edetch,” start-ups. The first cohort of six start-ups will start the program in London with a party on Jan. 17. Eton will not provide financial support or take equity (though it does not rule that out), but its teachers will help guide the start-ups in the program and may also try the new products with their students. “It’s quite easy for the technology to dominate and the way we’re interested in getting involved is to make sure there is a pedagogical influence as well,” Eton’s Serena Hedley-Dent told Quartz…